An investment adviser charged with helping to drain millions of dollars from Forest Hill funeral businesses pleaded guilty to theft and money-laundering charges on Thursday in a Memphis courtroom and was sentenced to 10 years probation.

Mark Singer, 47, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit theft over $60,000, theft over $60,000 and five counts of money-laundering. The conspiracy charge carried a recommended sentence of three years in prison while the other six counts each carried a recommended 10 years.

Criminal Court Judge Otis W. Higgs Jr. repeatedly tried but failed to learn whether state prosecutors agreed with sentencing Singer to 10 years probation in a case that accused him of siphoning $2.8 million from Forest Hill funeral businesses and helping former Forest Hill owner Clayton Smart take millions more.

In Chancery Court, defendants in the case face a restitution order of nearly $46 million, officials said.

Higgs, pressing state prosecutor Byron Winsett, said once the matters left the courtroom that they could be interpreted, misinterpreted, understood and misunderstood "when we talk about this kind of money and a man from out of state comes in and gets probation."

Still, Winsett held that the district attorney's office neither opposed nor supported probation.

"We respect the fact that we are leaving that to your honor to decide," Winsett said.

Max Shelton, a court-appointed receiver seeing to recover money looted from the businesses' trust funds, told Higgs that he supported probation because, as a condition, Singer agrees to testify truthfully against the investment firm Smith Barney, where he last worked when acting as Smith's financial adviser. Singer also is providing restitution.

Another condition of Singer's probation is that he remain living in New York. That's also a condition of his release from prison in Indiana, where he was convicted of similar offenses involving a different funeral business and received a three-year sentence in January 2011.

Higgs congratulated Singer's Memphis attorney Leslie Ballin, noting that the guilty plea avoids another trial. The first one in 2010 resulted in a hung jury.

Smart, 72, from Oklahoma, is serving a five-year federal prison sentence he received last year for tax evasion. His Oklahoma business partner, Steven W. Smith, 66, also was indicted in 2007 in Shelby County, but is ill with cancer and unlikely to return to court, Winsett said.